“I don’t. He’s very straight. But if you wanted to talk to Claire again, I’m sure she’d see you.”
“No, it’s okay. It was a girl, I think. I’m so sure it was a girl. Do you believe mothers have instincts about these things?”
“I knew you were a girl.”
Gwen nodded, relieved to have her instincts affirmed, pleased, also, to have to been recognized so early as herself. She wiped her hands on the grass and stood up, inelegantly. She was going to swim, she announced, and it was clear from her tone that she wished to go alone. Julia took out a book, but did not open it. She watched Gwen climbing down into the slippery green of the pond, watched her daughter’s long form move off through the murky water. A woman’s body now. A separate being, thinking her own closed, unguessable thoughts. She felt a sudden ache of longing for Gwen’s own babyhood. It took so little to call it back, the private rapture of her new daughter’s warm weight, slack and loose-jointed and slung, milk-drunk across Julia’s shoulder. Gwen in her arms had exuded an opiate. The tiny breaths against her neck, the sudden startles and then stillness and silence, the soft, urgent moans of baby dreams. Her finger gripped like a lifeline, unblinking gray eyes locked with her own in an exchange of silent promises. What would she give to start all over again, to be handed her infant daughter afresh, to file away each moment like a treasure, to do it right? She thought about the child her daughter had almost carried, and allowed the tears to come. She would listen harder. She would watch more closely. Next time she would be there to catch Gwen even before she slipped.
41.
On the morning of Nathan’s final exam Gwen washed and straightened her hair. He had not been home for more than two weeks and the last time they had seen one another had been just after she’d returned from the hospital when she had been curled on the sofa, barely responsive. She had been startled and touched by his devastation then, and it had shown her the right way to respond. Like a good army wife she had used her little strength to soothe him and patch him up and send him back into battle. When they’d spoken since she’d done her best to sound cheerful, and to listen when he talked about school. It became easier and easier to sound okay, for she had begun to feel okay, but there was still a conversation missing; she had comforted him, but missed her own comforting. She wanted back the concern he’d shown that first night. She wanted praise for her bravery, and coddling for her trauma. And she wanted to remind him as much as possible of her old self. His last day at Westminster was a milestone; she had needed him, and now she could tell him so and they could be together. They could reassemble their bedroom (surely now the parents would allow it) and they would feel close again, and united. He would begin to fathom the leaden weight of all she felt, the dull guilt and the piercing flashes of disbelief. Nathan’s love and admiration for her courage would lift the last sorrow from her shoulders like a cloak; he would be gallant, attentive, and she would shrug loose, would emerge poised and damaged, wiser and more beautiful, and walk free into the candlelight and music of the rest of her life. She could start to forget all she had learned about loneliness. In the darkness their fingertips would touch, and it would not be despair but safety and connection.
? ? ?
IN ST. JAMES’S PARK the grass had just been cut, and the warm air was filled with drowsy summer. Passing crowds of tourists stayed dutifully to the paths, studying their maps and phones and invariably in search of either the Mall and onward to Buckingham Palace, or Birdcage Walk and the Houses of Parliament. The Westminster boys lay on the freshly clipped lawns, blithe and privileged in charcoal suits and new freedom, playing a lazy, seated game of catch with a tight-crumpled ball of white paper that had once been an A-level exam sheet.
From his inside pocket Charlie drew a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes while from the same hiding place in his own wrinkled jacket Nathan produced his hip flask. The sight of it made Gwen smile to herself.
A dark-haired boy loped over to join them and dropped his rucksack in the middle of the circle. This was Edmund, who sat next to Nathan in Pure Maths. Edmund had long ago dated Valentina, briefly, which made him an object of interest. She studied his face for signs that he’d been branded in some manner by the Demon Barber.
“Champers?”
“Have you got? You star!”
“Gift from the olds. I’ve even got glasses.” Edmund unzipped his rucksack and began to flick plastic cups into their laps.
“Mixers?” asked Charlie.
“It’s champagne, you muppet.”
“For the vodka.”
“Nope. Mixers are for pussies.”
“I’ll go to the newsagent,” Gwen offered, seeing a way to participate whilst also getting away from his friends, for a moment. She stood up, squinting in the sunshine. Her sunglasses were in her bag but she now worried they were babyish; when she bought them she’d thought the heart-shaped lenses quirky and original, here she felt uncertain.
“Top girl. Orange juice, cranberry juice, soda.”
Gwen looked at Nathan, waiting.
“What?”
“Wallet?”
“No cash? Here.” He handed her a twenty-pound note. “Buy yourself something pretty.” His voice was hard and public, straining for cool and distance. He couldn’t help it. Later he would coo and nuzzle her, overcompensating, anxious for reassurance that she would not hold him to the distance he himself had made.
The shops were farther than she’d remembered. She decided to spend the rest of Nathan’s money on food, something that his friends would not have considered, and so bought cheese-and-onion crisps, Jaffa Cakes, and three large bags of Wine Gums. The drinks were heavy, and the thin plastic bags were splitting by the time she was halfway back across the field. She managed to fit one bottle into her own bag, but the others had to be tucked awkwardly into the crook of each arm, and her return progress was cumbrous and slightly sweaty in the rising heat of the afternoon. Every few yards she had to stop and readjust her burdens.
There were ten or twelve teenagers cross-legged in a circle by the time she returned, mostly boys, as well as two girls she didn’t recognize, one of whom had her stockinged feet in, or near to, Charlie’s crotch. The champagne and vodka bottles were empty, and a large Malibu was circulating.
“You can’t mix Malibu and cranberry juice!” snorted Nathan, when he saw her. “What were you thinking, woman?”
“It was vodka when I left.”
“Water into wine. Vodka into Malibu. Transubstantiation.” He widened his eyes. “It’s a miracle.”
“Transubstantiation’s not water into wine, Fuller.” Beside him Edmund began to guffaw with tipsy laughter. “Such a fucking Jew.”